The best version of me.

At one point I had it all together. A man of God. Headed in the right direction.

I was sick and tired of what "Christian men" had become, they were these weak, emasculated beings that never stood up for anything if it upset someone and constantly apologized for doing the right thing. Somewhere in the history of man they had lost their warrior mentality and become these mindless drones that avoided confrontation at all costs and would never stand against adversity. Some of my friends and I would get together once every other week and talk about what it looked like to be a man of God, and you know what we realized? What the church was telling us to be wasn't what God wanted us to be. So we ran with that, we fell more and more in love with the Lord and in the process learned to stand up for the weak, to fight when we had to, to love with all of our hearts. I loved what we were becoming, we loved what we were becoming. I was becoming the best version of me. This was years ago.

I became more important to me, I thought that standing up for myself when I thought I was right was the same as standing up for others when they were right - the only problem with that is perspective. I couldn't be impartial in the way I looked at myself - I didn't realize this. I stood up for myself when I was wrong and I wouldn't back down - I became less of a man. Instead of taking time to listen to another's point of view and trying to understand it I remained stubborn - I became less of a man. I couldn't be corrected, I was always right - the Bible would define me as a fool - I became less of a man. Eventually I was hollow - on the outside I looked the same, I even fooled most people into thinking I was the same, but I wasn't - I was hostile, I was stubborn, I was far from above reproach, and I was selfish ... I was becoming the worst possible version of myself. This was less than a year ago.

The best version of myself would have kicked the worst versions of myself's ass. And the worst version of me would have still thought he was right.

Then the hollow me caved in, it was New Years Eve and there wasn't even enough of a shell to stay upright - I had spent months trying to pull myself together on my own and all I was doing was filling myself with more air, making myself harder on the outside, but if you know anything about hard materials, the harder they are the more brittle they become - Like Humpty Dumpty I fell apart. I woke up the next day furious - furious at myself for what I had become, but then all of The King's horses and all of The King's men tried to put me together again, and you know what - I didn't have the strength to fight it any more. I knew I had to turn to The King and trust only in Him, only He had the ability to get me back on the right track.

See, I know what it's like to be developing into the best version of myself - it feels incredible, but it can't be done alone - it can't be sustained alone, you need others that are like-minded, you need to never stop developing - you won't achieve it in this lifetime, the idea that you have achieved it is the most dangerous idea you can have - I had to lose the most valuable things to me in order to realize this - and while that's a tough pill to swallow, it's exactly what I needed to get off of that horrible path I was heading down, and I'm thankful for it.

So now, I must continue striving to be the best version of myself - never wavering, never becoming discouraged or puffed up and to always maintain perspective - that's why accountability is so incredibly important. For the first time in a while I'm truly happy about where I'm headed as a person - as a man.